


so you want to be a jedi

by starforged



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7569502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were collected, the same as any other child into the Order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so you want to be a jedi

Her parents are desperate and hungry. They know there’s something different about her, maybe because there’s something different about her mother, too. She feels things before they are about to happen. It’s what keeps them alive when her father’s gambling has gone too far.

They are loving parents. Warm, affectionate. They hold hands often, and it sets the girl at ease. They hold her often, and her father sings her to sleep when her dreams cause her panic. 

But she can see it in their faces when her own abilities far surpass getting “feelings”.

She is young, but she’s smart. Smarter than any of the other kids. Smarter than a lot of the adults, too. 

It makes her a target.

Their desperation is about saving her, and their hunger is about saving themselves. 

Meetra doesn’t cry when they sell her to the Jedi, a funny little man with curling gray hair and a happy smile. He’s charmed by her instantly. They usually are. She holds out her hand to her parents, and they hold it one last time, chubby fingers swallowed by their defined, callous ones. 

Her father cries. Her mother tells her that she has a good feeling about this. That she’s _something_. That they love her. 

She’s assured she’ll fit in just fine, that she is strong. The Masters will see it too. Her parents are relieved.

She is relieved. 

* * *

The nightmares keep him up. He hasn’t slept in days, nearly a week. Exhaustion creeps up constantly, but usually he can push it back down with a calming breath. The gray and white and brown and blue calling colors of sleep push back another moment. He wants to, but he can’t.

When he closes his eyes, he sees them storming his village. He feels the fires against his skin again. He hears the screams. But only when his eyes close. 

His mother is gets enough sleep for the both of them, at least. She’s still curled up on the cot in the one room they both share to live in. There’s a harsh stench that comes from her, and he can’t remember the last time she took a bath. He can’t remember the last time he forced her into the bath, talking her into it with a soft voice.

_You must bathe, Mother. You must get up._

_I must bathe._

It scared him, the hollow way she spoke and how much more empty her eyes were when she climbed to her feet. He doesn’t want to feel like that again, like he has control over her.

But when he doesn’t, she lets herself sink further. She reeks and she’s bony and she doesn’t talk anymore. 

They watched Father die, and she collapsed in on herself.

He can’t live this way anymore. He can’t live with a dead mother and with not sleeping anymore.

_You’re keeping yourself awake with the Force._

_The Force? Like a Jedi?_

_Exactly that. You’re a strong one, too. Come with me, and I promise you won’t have those nightmares anymore._

“I have to go,” Alek tells his mother. “They want me to go.”  


He wants to go.

She doesn’t even look at him when he packs the small bag of belongings and leaves the room for the last time.

* * *

The Jedi never come out to the Outer Rim - or at least, the boy doesn’t remember in his lifetime when they have come to _his_  home. He doesn’t know much about them, but what he knows, he wants. Needs.

Is.

There are three of them, and they look like nothing particular special. But the boy likes when visitors appear, Jedi or not, because they bring things he doesn’t know about to him. And they _always_  give him what he’s looking for. The Jedi are different though.

They look the same, but they feel like how he feels. Alive, thriving, beneath that ocean of calm. 

He approaches them without care, and like all the others, they don’t ignore him.

“I want to be a Jedi,” he tells them.  


The one, a Twi’lek girl, laughs. A tension bubbles up in him, a thread of anger that he tries to stomp back down. He realizes she’s not laughing at him but at his request.

“A lot of people want to be Jedi. But not everyone is qualified to be one,” she explains. Leaning down, she taps a finger along the bridge of his nose. “What makes you think that you can be?”  


“Because I want to be.” There’s conviction in his voice, and power. She looks confused for a second before looking at her companions.  


“Do you–”  


“Yes,” the older man says.  


“He is too old.” She’s younger than the both of them, arms crossed over her chest and her lips pulled into a pout. She’s less calm than the others.  


The boy thinks he can take her, if he has to prove himself. His methods are crude, he knows, but what is a boy to do when Jedi don’t come to the Outer Rim?

“I’m right here. I _can_  hear you, you know,” he reminds them with a wag of his finger.  


“I like his style,” the Twi’lek laughs. She straightens up, ruffling his mop of black hair. “And who are we to say he cannot be trained? If he has the Force–”  


“The Masters will reject him.”  


The older man, clearly the one in charge, looks him over with a scrutinizing look. He is the calmest of them all. There’s wisdom in his eyes, in his stance. The boy likes him the most. 

“No,” the man says. “I do not think they will.”  



End file.
